Google is offering Americans a free Nexus S Android phone from its rather popular homepage.
The offer lasts through the end of today (August 3). And you must agree to a two year wireless contract with an American wireless carrier. And you must agree to share yourself with Google.
The Nexus S is an Android phone whose software …

"Free" with a two year contract

A different pricing model

In the UK this phone is free (eg. with Vodafone) if you get a 24 month, £36 contract. That's not horrific, it's just normal business over here. There is nothing up front (except maybe the first month's payment) so the total cost, including calls, data and texts (900 minutes, 750 Mb and unlimited respectively per month), is about $1420 over 2 years at the current exchange rate.

of course it's free

Contract != free

"In the UK this phone is free (eg. with Vodafone) if you get a 24 month, £36 contract. "

So you spend £864 and you get a "free phone". That's the point I'm making. It's not free. At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, providers do this to prevent churn and to lock you into a higher priced contract which I doubt very many people make full use of.

If providers were compelled to sell phones on an as-is basis, possibly SIM free there would be vastly more transparency in the way they operate and do business. They might actually have to compete with each other harder for one thing.

Born free

"So not free then. It's probably tied to some horrific plans which mean an outlay of $1500 up"

Forgive me, I obviously didn't make the obvious obvious enough.

The phone is free, in the sense that you don't pay separately for the phone. The phone is part of the package and nobody familiar with this business model will expect a phone outside of any package without having to pay any money. This is how phones are sold elsewhere, you'll get used to it if Google has its way:

Cost of contract = £30, cost of phone = £100

Cost of contract = £35, cost of phone = FREE

One of these contracts has a free phone. Can you tell which one does and which doesn't?

It's not tied to any horrific plan unless you choose a horrific plan. If you don't want a phone as part of the contract then use one you already have, or buy one sim-free. Then buy airtime separately and you'll find that competition has forced the service providers to lock you into a contract anyway, or to give you a horrific plan. For example, Vodafone's 12 month plan is £10.50 for 300 minutes and 3000 texts per month but their 30 day plan gets you only 100 minutes and 500 texts for the same money. Aren't free markets great?

There is no $1500 outlay, you get the phone for free. No money. Nada. Yours, if you take the airtime contract. If you choose a different contract then the phone is not free. A free phone is the exact opposite of paying money up-front (see example above).

Obviously

"Cost of contract = £30, cost of phone = £100

Cost of contract = £35, cost of phone = FREE"

That's not free as in free, that's free as in subsidized -- which isn't really free at all. And that was DrXym's point. His $1500 outlay was not an up-front payment, but the sum of the cost of the contract.

Now if you were to say that you could get the same phone free without a higher-priced contract, I'd call you a liar*. But that would be a free as in free phone.

Fanboy silliness.

...I am surprised that the silly fanboy didn't try to frame the act of subsidizing the sale of an Android phone as some sort of grave patent infringement. It would go better with the rest of the days nonsense.

Android phones are sold the way any other phones are including Apple and Nokia.

Desperate.

Really?

Wonder why I got mine free then (with a mobile contract of course)....?

It's no diffrerent from o2/Orange/Vodafone et al. doing a "FREE PHONE* (*for £25/month)" aside from the fact Google's is more noticeable - for Apple it's buried deep inside their pages (I guess they would rather get the full £/$ value themselves).

iphone?

isnt that the phone thats ONLY made by Apple and ONLY runs an OS written by Apple?

hmmm. you know, those Android phones seem so much better when you realise you can get them from many manufacturers, in the style that suits you with whatever google features you want enabled and the rest turned off. i actually know android people who dont use any of the google software. crazy but thats their choice.

oh, and you dont need a copy of iTunes or a PC or Mac to actually start using an Android phone ;-)

I know plenty who paid up front

Avoids paying it out over 2 years of your life. Typically, subsidized iphone contracts are about £20 more per month than equivalent non-subsidized contract, over 2 years thats £480, Add on £69 for the initial cost of the phone on subsidy (subsidies only go so far), and its a wee bit more than the £515 purchase price.

Exactly

Work out the price of the SIM free phone and a contract or payg that genuinely suits your predicted uses and chances are it would be the same price or less than being locked into their service for 2 years. It would also mean you have a SIM free phone with timely firmware updates rather than waiting for the provider to supply them (if ever) and when they do enjoying all the extra crapware and restrictions they've baked into it.

Nice! Sort of...

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits

In North America, we use 2 different digital technologies for cellular - GSM (with the sim card, same tech as MOST of the world uses) and CDMA (no sim card used). Sprint is mostly a CDMA carrier (Along with Verizon), ATT is a GSM carrier. There are a few hybrid phones on the market (mostly targeted at world travelers) as, generally, at least in the US, CDMA carriers tend to have better coverage. (this is changing as carriers ramp up 4G coverage based off GSM technology instead of CDMA/EVDO tech)

nothing is free

Free Phones

As a British Ex-pat in the USA, this very much reminded me of the FREE PHONES posters you'd see in the Orange or O2 shops. They really are behind the times over here when it comes to prooting services with free (subsidised) phones, you still have to pay for phones here. Also the prices are just made up on the spot: my HTC Aria was $129 when it first came out, but within 6 months it had crashed to $24.99 (unlocked phone still about $390)

Love 'em or hate 'em, at least Google are trying to introduce European style mobile phone promotions to the States.

Hmmm

'and small piece of your soul required'

You had me until the title above... oh that and the fact I live in the UK and most phones are free on 18+ month contracts.

Sorry, but I do not trust Googles usage reporting at the best of times - would not surprise me if you were 'sold' this on condition they recorded and sent back your calls and texts for inspection.

Working for a telco the amount of times I've seen payg and contract customers complaining about Android regardless of if data is on or off on the device accessing the web and running up out of bundle charges is surprising..... until you realise just how much google relies on those statistics, usage and diagnostic reports this 'always on' smart phone spurts back to the mothership.

I realise it sounds like a conspiracy... but there is only so often I can tell a customer they were charged a £1 a day for their weather widget updating.

I gave up on 'free' a long time ago

'Free' like the word 'Unlimited' has been taken over by marketeers and has lost all meaning these days.

The word 'free' should be used when something is given freely, no payment expected, no strings attached. A two-year contract is a pretty big string and means that whoever is offering the deal has just hidden the cost of the 'free' thing in the amount you'll be paying them for the next two years.

These days I prefer to ignore all these promotions and make my choices based on what I like and think is the best deal, looking at all the costs involved.

Ahem

Absolute Truth In Advertising.

"There Oughta Be A Law" specifying that any advertising must be completely and wholly true. Nothing can be said to be free unless you can just take one and walk out the door with it with nothing else to do (and no, filling out a survey involves a time and information cost, so it doesn't count!). Nothing should be listed as unlimited if providers intend to put in a cap, throttle, or any form of "limitation". I've since given up on most TV ads since they're trying to spear you with lies, damned lies, and statistics. Meanwhile, the print flyers I never read without my magnified (for the fine print) sceptic glasses on.

Nothing is ever free

Nothing is ever as free as you seem to be suggesting is possible.

I presume you think the NHS is free? That the Metro newspaper is free? Those pens you pick up as you walk around exhibitions?

No. You pay for it somehow. You pay for the NHS through National Insurance. You pay for the Metro because you're buying things off the companies that advertise in it. You pay for those pens because at some point in time, you're probably going to go and buy something from that company.

The key point is, many many things are Free at Point of Use (FAPOU), or Free at Point of Purchase (FAPOP), but just about nothing is ever free full-stop.

Many phones are free*

*with two year commitment. It just depends on what kind of phone you want. The latest and greatest thing, with all the bells and whistles, is going to cost some coin, but it is still heavily subsidized over the cost of buying one without a contract. If you are satisfied with a refurbished version of a model that came out 6 or more months ago, it can usually be had for free, or practically so.

My GF and I just upgraded our phones from dinosaurs to smart phones. She got a refurbished iPhone 3GS, and I got a refurbished Motorola Atrix. Total outlay: less than $60 (mostly for the Atrix, since it is newer). Cost of those phones without a contract? Well, you couldn't get a refurb, so you'd have to buy them new, and pay full price, which would probably run at least $400 each.

Free? Why, yes, yes it is.

What, you expected a free mobile phone AND free mobile contract? Just what fantasy world were you living in: of course the mobile contract will be anything but free. The PHONE is free, and you get to PICK your mobile contract from THREE different providers (in the US), so I don't see what all the monetary complaining is about. Unless you just wanted to get the phone and not actually use it as a, erm, phone... Now, if you wanted to argue about selling your soul to Google, then we'd have a valid argument.